PhD dissertator, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

I am very pleased to join the faculty at Simmons College in Boston, MA as an assistant professor this summer. Simmons has an excellent reputation in Library Science and Archives education and is a great fit for my teaching and research experience in information organization and art documentation. I look forward to the move east, working with an exceptional faculty and student body, and getting to know the Boston area.

I had the privilege of traveling to Rio de Janeiro this past September to present my research at the 14th International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) Conference. The theme of the conference was “Knowledge Organization for a Sustainable World: Challenges and Perspectives for Cultural, Scientific, and Technological Sharing in a Connected Society.” My presentation, “Describing an Outsider Art Movement from Within: The AAT and Graffiti Art,” was chosen as the best paper of the conference. All conference proceedings were published in volume 15 of the series Advances in Knowledge Organization by Ergon Press.

I am a PhD dissertator at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee in the School of Information Studies (SOIS). My research is in the area of knowledge organization (KO). I am studying how people gather, organize, share, and describe collections using various systems for organization, such as classifications, taxonomies, folksonomies, and metadata schemas. Their collections may consist of research articles, books, artworks, or even abstract things such as concepts or ideas.

Currently I am finishing up my dissertation proposal and getting ready for the work that will become the basis of the dissertation itself. I will be studying a particular non-academic domain of artists and art lovers and how they have organically developed a knowledge organization system, or KOS, to suit their needs.

When not working or studying, I enjoy running, biking, hiking, knitting, and photography. I began volunteering this past summer at the Urban Ecology Center, working as a Citizen Scientist helping to survey local odonate populations (dragonflies and damselflies). A long-time resident of Milwaukee, I have four children and two miniature schnauzers.